World Athletics in effect returns women's track and field competitions entirely to women
Imagine how much money was blown in this furiously pointless stampede that was assured of eventually returning to its starting point
Yesterday, World Athletics, the international governing body of track and field, in effect banned biological males from all female events. No transgender females will be allowed at all, and athletes with the 46-X,Y disorder type of sexual development (DSD) will have to maintain such low testosterone levels—frankly unhealthy—that they are effectively excluded as a class as well.
The announcement, which is coupled to a stew of War in Ukraine bullshit, comes eight months after World Athletics President Sebastian Coe seemed to grasp for the first time what had become of women's track and field under his lengthy tenure.
It also comes just a few weeks after writers at The New York Times took a stand against criticism—some of it internal—of the paper's unusually honest recent look at the unfavorable consequences of using puberty-blockers and other interventions in the “gender affirmation“ of adolescents. The era of gender activists getting unconditionally approving coverage no matter how ugly their antics become is evidently at a close.
The stances of The New York Times in effect set the editorial agendas of the rest of the nation's equally corrupted corporate media outlets. It also takes its cues from the World Economic Forum, which both NYT publisher A.G. Sulzberger and Coe have attended. Perhaps a decision was made in Davos in January to nix at least this attraction in the ongoing worldwide diversity circus.
The reaction from trans-rights activists was predictably as incoherent as it was irate. Since no transgender women are currently competing at the elite level of track and field, no one was directly affected by this part of the rules change. Despite the clear reasoning of World Athletics here--i.e., there may be no trans women on the scene now, but it wasn't going to be long—TRAs struck back with “The fact that they made this rule when there were non trans people to ban shows how much they hate us.”
My answer to that is, if no one was affected here, why the hell are you bitching, period? But since a phantom victim is as real as a tangible one to these folks, to them this is splitting hairs.
I understand the outrage. For one thing, people given something they want—even if the gift is enjoyed vicariously—don't like to see it taken away, even if they never deserved it on rational grounds in the first place. For another, TRAs are woefully infantile and unable to tolerate systems that don't continually reward them no matter the costs to others. They believe no one's feelings matter but their own.
And they all trumpet the same sour notes about the real threats to women's sports being abuse, low pay, and so on. And it doesn't matter how much evidence you provide them that they're wrong, because they simply refuse to acknowledge how unfair is to girls and women at all levels to have to compete against males and often share locker rooms with them.
Elite American miler Nikki Hiltz's histrionics in this area are woefully blunt-minded even for the genre. Hiltz is sponsored by Lululemon, a company that, as Chris Rock observed in his recently released Netflix special, makes $100 yoga pants, and is no more essential to smooth societal functioning than the empty term “nonbinary.” Yet Hiltz calling herself “nonbinary” is undoubtedly making her a lot more money than her legs are. Like Alison Desir, her career arc and sponsorship deals imply that she's a victim of oppression and bigotry to roughly the same extent as the Kardashians; both of them could at least periodically feign gratitude for that much.
Also making huge piles of money in this circus over the years are the countless diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) “scholars” who have participated with World Athletics in its policymaking. Most of these slime-spreaders are funded by succubus-billionaires like Bill Gates and George Soros; all of these gendercrats should disappear for good, followed in short order their psychopathic paymasters.
And how many tens of millions of dollars did attorneys on both sides of this needless scrum, this glum excursion into derogating women's athletics, rake in? All to initiate, then repair, a problem every sane observer older than six could see was a problem from the start?
The authors of that story might want to look at the differences between the men's and women's world records in every event. All were achieved by physical labor, none by political fiat.
The argument that barring people from a girls’ or women's team and directing them toward the corresponding boys’ team is keeping them out of sports altogether is so stupid it burns. Yet the TRAs are still working that angle, too.
I went to the same high school as my mother, starting ninth grade nineteen years after she graduated. During my years at Comcord High, there were varsity girls’ teams for cross-country, field hockey, soccer, basketball, indoor track, softball, outdoor track, and tennis. During my mother's years at CHS, there were none. There literally were no scholastic sports for girls to play.
I know that reasoning with the unwell and the frantically self-entitled never budges them a micron. Biology and anatomy don't resonate with people who pretend calling something by a different name imbues it with different qualities. They might as well be insisting they're wizards, although I've reserved that one for myself for now. And pointing out harms to others hits home in the same way telling a dog “Don't deep-clean your anus with your tongue before dinner” does.
It's unclear whether this policy restoration will trickle down into the NCAA or into American high schools, or propagate laterally into sports in which transgender women and girls remain purposefully disruptive elements.